Penn State is having money trouble. Just ask. The administration will tell you.

“The challenges we face — declining enrollments, demographic shifts and financial pressures — are not unique to Penn State, but they require us to make difficult choices,” President Neeli Bendapudi wrote in a February message.

That was when she announced that some branch campuses could be shuttered. Three months later, with no plansfor the campuses’ future, the decisionwas made and rubber-stamped by the trustees. Among those closing would be New Kensington and Fayette.

But that’s not all. Penn State budget cuts have hit staffing, with a “strategic hiring freeze” announced in 2022. In 2023, the university offered a hope that attrition would help pare the costs. That same year, Spotlight PA quoted an internal memo in which Bendapudi denied the university being in crisis, instead opting to phrase the situation as “in a vulnerable state.”

In May 2024, there were voluntary buyouts for employees. In June, the university’s public broadcasting station WPSU announced layoffs and the conversion of some full-time positions to part time. That wasn’t enough, apparently, as trustees voted last week to close the station rather than transfer operations to another media organization. It all paints a grim picture.

Bendapudi isn’t wrong when she says the university has challenges and that they are similar to those faced elsewhere. Many colleges are staring down drops in enrollment. Pennsylvania’s state and state-related colleges have protracted fights with Harrisburg lawmakers every year to get funding. This year’s budget battle and the uncertainty of federal funding doesn’t help.

But there are signs that Penn State has its priorities — witness the ongoing $700 million renovation at Beaver Stadium. So while students at a branch campus might feel the pinch, Nittany Lions football won’t.

And then there is Bendapudi herself.

At the same time WPSU was being shown the door, the university president was being given a raise. The average salary increase in the U.S. this year is 3.4 percent, according to nonprofit business think tank The Conference Board.

Bendapudi received a 47 percent increase in her base pay, taking it from $950,000 to $1.4 million. That is higher than the base salaries of the last two Harvard presidents. Pitt Chancellor Joan Gabel makes $950,000 in base pay.

According to a recent report by the Chronicle of Higher Education, the change would make Bendapudi the second-highest paid public university president in the country, behind only Jay Hartzell at the University of Texas-Austin. She leapfrogs 15 public administrators, including those at Ohio State, Michigan, Clemson and Florida State.

This comes after another change last year that increased her incentive to stay, changing a $1.25 million sweetener to stay until 2027 to a $1.5 million check if she stays until 2032.

It’s not only disgusting to see this kind of flagrant increase while other people are losing their jobs and their educational homes. It’s also disingenuous.

How does anyone working for Penn State accept the need for belt-tightening when the president’s belt is being loosened to accommodate a fatter wallet?

And how does a student — or a student’s parent — swallow the cost of a Penn State education knowing this is where the money is going?

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review